2-Minute Review

Let's cut through the noise, and get to the crux of it. 6 Expert Reviews analysed and summarised by the PhoneCurry Editorial Team, in a short and sweet 2-minute review.

Design

Premium, aesthetic design - Nubia has been focusing on styling, build quality and design aspect of its smartphones, and the Z17 Mini is no different - featuring a full-metal unibody in black, the back is smooth and slightly curved to properly fit in your hand - the corners are rounded, and have chamfered edges with a gold finish, adding a distinct look and feel the smartphone

Nubia has also added a golden ring to the edges of the fingerprint scanner, which adds to its look and feel - it is quick to scan the fingerprint and unlocks the smartphone quickly enough

Display

Good 5.2-inch full HD screen - bright, offers good legibility under direct sunlight, decent viewing angles, and color reproduction is punchy too - the saturation level is impressive, and those who like the colors popping out will really appreciate it

Software

The Nubia UI come bundled in with some useful software - such as dual instance, which lets you run two instances of WhatsApp, Facebook or WeChat accounts on the smartphone in separate apps

The Nubia UI is decent and aesthetically designed but can get confusing in places like the settings menu as even the simplest options such as battery, storage, memory are inside the additional settings, rather than being up front in the main list

Performance

Camera

Very good dual-camera setup - giving the phone the ability to capture better, sharp photos, even in low-light - overall the phone does pretty good in all sorts of lighting conditions, giving arguably one of the best camera performances in this price bracket

The camera also has many tricks up its sleeve - a ‘portrait mode’ which lets you focus on the subject, while blurring the background, 'clone' where you can click three photos while moving around, thus creating your clone, 'time shuttle mode' where the subject is in focus, whereas the rest of the screen is diffused, offering a fast motion sort of effect

The front-facing 16-megapixel camera is decent too, though nothing exceptional

Video recording is again decent, though nothing exceptional

The only other camera-centric phone in this price bracket in the competition is the Honor 8 - which offers similar dual camera setup and camera quality - though the Nubia sets itself apart with the interesting photo modes that aren’t on offer on the Honor 8

Battery

Solid battery life - lasts the day, even with heavy use

Charging speed is decent - takes about two hours for the smartphone to charge from 0 to 100 percent - but definitely not among the best in this price bracket